They besought him for details and got them in Bill’s own fashion of telling.  Briefly, he had long had in mind a trip down to the Picardo ranch, just to see the boys and the country and have a talk over the stirring events of the past month; and, he added, he wanted to bring Jack his pistols himself, because it was not reasonable to expect any greaser to withstand the temptation of keeping them, once he got them in his hands.

Therefore, having plenty of excuses for venturing so far from his place, and having “tied the dove of peace to the ridge-pole” of town by means of some thorough work on the part of the new Committee, he had boldly set forth that morning, soon after sunrise, upon a horse which somebody had sworn that a lady could ride.

Bill confessed frankly that he wasn’t any lady, however; and so, when the horse ducked unexpectedly to one side of the trail, because of something he saw in the long grass, Bill surprised himself very much by getting his next clear impression of the situation from the ground.

“I dunno how I got there, but I was there, all right, and it didn’t feel good, either.  But I’d been making up my mind to get off and try walking though, so I done it.  Say, I don’t see nothing so damned attractive about riding horseback, anyway!”

He yelled at the horse to stop, but it appeared that his whoas were so terrifying that the horse ran for its life.  So Bill started to walk, beguiling the time, by soliloquizing upon—­well, Bill put it this way:  “I walked and I cussed, and I cussed and I walked, for about four hours and a half.  Say!  How do you make out it’s only twenty miles?”

“Nearer thirty” corrected Dade, and Bill grunted and went on with the story of his misfortunes.  Walking became monotonous, and he wearied of soliloquy before the cattle discovered him.

“Met quite a band, all of a sudden,” said Bill.  “They throned up their heads and looked at me like I was wild Injuns, and I shooed ’em off—­or tried to.  They did run a little piece, and then they all turned and looked a minute, and commenced coming again, heads up and tails a-rising.  And,” he added naively, “I commenced going!” He said he thought that he could go faster than they could come; but the faster he departed, the more eager was their arrival.  “Till we was all of us on the gallop and tongues a-hanging.”

Bill was big, and he was inclined to flesh because of no exercise more strenuous than quelling incipient riots in his place, or weighing the dust that passed into his hands and ownership.  He must have run for some distance, since he swore by several forbidden things that the chase lasted for five miles—­“And if you don’t believe it, you can ride back up the trail till you come to the dent I made with my toes when I started in.”

Other cattle came up and joined in the race, until Bill had quite a following; and when he was gasping for breath and losing hope of seeing another day, he came upon a live oak, whose branches started almost from the roots and inclined upward so gently that even a fat man who has lost his breath need not hesitate over the climbing.